He gave the composition the simple title of ‘Psalm 1963’, and I had a chance to hear it myself, played on the piano more than fifteen years later. It was a very beautiful piece. The Quakers seemed to like it. I understood why.
The months passed. Henry the Dane composed music on the old harmonium while the others pottered around the farm and held meetings. Now and then people would come to visit. They were very stern and reserved gentlemen, some from Sweden, who talked mostly to Fredrik in the office in one of the wings of the farm. Their conversations were of a confidential nature, and Henry didn’t get involved. At least he tried to stay out of things, but in the long run it didn’t work.
Tove looked as if she were happy most of the time. Sometimes she would say something ambiguous, like the fact that she was so happy that she ‘regretted everything’. Henry wanted her to explain, but she preferred not to. Sometimes she would cry in the night when she thought he was asleep. Towards the end of the summer Henry wanted to know what was going on, what was the matter with Tove. He couldn’t stand all this monkey-business going on around him anymore.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ said Tove one evening. ‘It’s almost time.’
They’d had a substantial dinner with all the food for which the Danes are so famous: a plump and magnificent ham, liver pâté, eel with scrambled eggs, and a good deal of Aalborg aquavit. Henry was in good spirits because of the alcohol, but after they’d made love and Tove started to cry again, he wanted to know what was going on. He said that he’d noticed quite a few things.
‘Can’t you just be patient a little while longer?’ said Tove.
‘I want to know now. Tonight,’ said Henry. ‘I can’t stand seeing you cry.’
‘I can’t tell you anything,’ said Tove. ‘I’m not allowed to.’
‘I thought you Quakers were so forthright.’
‘Go to sleep,’ said Tove. ‘And be patient for a little while longer.’
Henry didn’t feel like sleeping. He had got himself all worked up about the situation, and he was also pissed off about all the suit-clad spies wandering around the farm. He was paranoid because he was a deserter and the police were after him. He threw on his clothes and went out to smoke a cigarette and calm down, but as soon as he stepped outside, it started to rain. A quiet, cool drizzle began falling over the coast, and the sea was rolling indolently, as if heralding the autumn, a departure and freedom.
Henry wondered what the hell he was mixed up in. What was he doing out here in this flat, Danish wasteland? He had simply allowed himself to be deported out here, like some sort of prisoner. The rain and his thoughts made Henry furious, and he saw that there were lights on in Fredrik’s office in one wing of the farm. He sneaked over there to peer inside.
Fredrik was sitting at his desk with his Rasputin beard, working. He was hunched down beneath a lamp, reading documents. He had a big map open before him, and now and then he would write a note in a black book.
Henry tapped on the windowpane and Fredrik flinched as if at a gunshot. He regained his composure as soon as he saw that it was Henry. He opened the window and asked him what in the name of peace he was doing out in the rain.
‘I saw that your light was on,’ said Henry. ‘There’s one thing I need to know …’
‘Don’t talk so loud,’ said Fredrik. ‘You’ll wake up the whole countryside. Why don’t you come inside, instead.’
Henry stepped into the office and sat down next to the desk.
‘I know,’ said Fredrik. ‘I know that Tove is unhappy. She’s feeling rather desperate. She loves you, Henry. That really wasn’t the intention …’
Fredrik looked deeply concerned and he was frowning hard.
‘What do you mean? What intention?’ asked Henry.
Fredrik chewed thoughtfully on the end of his pencil. His damp sweater smelled faintly of sheep.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Henry. ‘There is something, isn’t there? I want to know right now, because it has something to do with me.’
‘All right,’ sighed Fredrik, twisting a tuft of his Rasputin beard. ‘I suppose it’s just as well … Do you know about the Kjell Nilsson case?’
‘The guy from Lund?’
‘Precisely! Maybe you also know that he and another Swede have been indicted?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Would you dare do what they did?’
‘Go to Berlin?!’
‘We know that you’re the right man, Henry. You have the right attitude about things, and you’re brave.’
‘How can you know what I think about things?’
‘A person just knows. I’m a good judge of character. Tove is too. And we’ve done a good deal of checking up on you.’
Henry sank back in his chair and started biting his fingernails. ‘Let’s not have any more pussyfooting around,’ he said, annoyed. ‘What is it you’re after?’
‘The police are looking for you, Henry,’ said Fredrik calmly.
‘So what? I plan to go back to Sweden, when the right time presents itself.’
‘But it might be good to have a new passport, don’t you think?’
‘Is this some sort of blackmail?’
‘Not at all,’ said Fredrik without losing his composure. ‘Not at all. It’s just a question of services rendered and favours returned …’
‘So what is this plan of yours? Let’s hear it!’
‘It’s simple,’ said Fredrik. ‘You’re really not risking very much.’
The Quaker demanded that Henry take a vow of secrecy, swearing on his honour and conscience, and then he explained the plan, or at least the part of the plan in which Henry Morgan would play a role, and it was undeniably very simple. In possession of a counterfeit passport, he had to take the ferry to Sassnitz, then the train to Berlin. There he was supposed to check in at a hotel and wait for a message, the go-ahead for the next stage. That would be a short trip via Checkpoint Charlie to East Berlin to hand over a whole slew of counterfeit passports. The documents would then be used later by people travelling to the West.
‘There’s not much that can go wrong,’ said Fredrik. ‘You’ll have with you a perfect-looking suitcase with a false bottom. You hand it over to a man in East Berlin and then you leave.’
‘How banal,’ said Henry. ‘Just like some sleazy thriller.’
‘There are so many things that are banal in life,’ said Fredrik.
‘I doubt that,’ said Henry.
‘Of course I’ve forgotten to say that you’ll be given a great deal of money.’
‘Where?’ asked Henry, immediately a bit more interested.
‘In West Berlin.’
‘What if I get caught?’
‘That’s highly unlikely. But if you do get caught, you’ll be handed over to the Swedish authorities. There are certain guarantees. But that’s not going to happen. We have good contacts with many influential Swedes. The Girrman League operates in the same way, and they’ll back us up if anything goes wrong.’
‘What about Tove?’ said Henry. ‘When do I get to see Tove again?’
‘As soon as you get back, of course.’
Henry thought the whole thing smelled fishy. He had never believed that these kinds of things actually went on in real life. Yet he didn’t doubt for a second that Fredrik was dead serious. A man with a beard like that was no joker. These Quakers were mixed up in something – he’d realised that right from the beginning – but he would never have dreamt that it was a shady business of this calibre. After this, he would always feel a certain kinship with James Bond.
‘I think this whole thing stinks a bit of the Wennerström affair,’ said Henry.
‘Wennerström was on the opposite side. He was military.’
‘That’s beside the point.’
‘This isn’t a matter of political loyalties,’ said Fredrik, still confident and calm. ‘This is an ethical matter, a question of freedom and morality, families that have been split up …’
�
��If you say the word responsibility I’m going to throw up,’ said Henry.
‘But why? It is a question of responsibility. You’ll take the risk, Henry. I know you will. We know a good deal about you. You took the chance of paddling a canoe to get away from the military. So of course you’ll dare do something as airtight as this.’
‘I’m not a coward,’ said Henry proudly. ‘Of course I dare. No one is going to call me a coward!’
‘Then think it over,’ said Fredrik. ‘We can’t force you to do this. Give me your answer tomorrow. I know that Tove would appreciate a yes from you.’
The story of Henry the secret agent is perhaps the most remarkable of all. It has to do with Bill Yard, who comes to Berlin, pretending to be a musician, but in actual fact, he deals in the smuggling of people from the East to the West.
It started on the ferry. The bar on the ferry was unusually dreary – silent and depressing. Henry was feeling dejected. The young deserter, now travelling under the false identity of Bill Yard, who was both a boxer and a pianist, was extremely melancholy. He had killed a couple of hours on correspondence. A letter home to his mother, telling her that everything was fine, that he was being well looked after by very nice people, Quakers as they were called, and that he had been given a unique opportunity to go to Berlin to listen to the great American jazz that was being played there for the Yanks stationed in the American zone.
He had killed another hour by writing a letter to Maud in which he included what he thought were some very sophisticated hints that he had found someone else, a Dane, whom he loved passionately. But he didn’t really believe it himself.
Now he was sitting on the ferry to Sassnitz, and he couldn’t help looking for other girls. It was as if he’d already forgotten Tove. She had talked about sacrifice as being the truest form of love, sacrificing your own interests for a great cause, as she and Henry were doing; that was the highest form of love. She claimed to be happy that he was going. When they parted at the door to the building near Ørsted Park in Copenhagen, she gave Henry an amulet to wear on a chain around his neck. Henry now fished out the amulet from inside his shirt and read the Latin on the little silver disk: HODIE MIHI, CRAS TIBI – today for me, tomorrow for you. He dunked the amulet in his glass of whisky and then popped it in his mouth, sucking off the drops of British spirit and wondering whether he was going to keep on collecting trophies from women all his life. He had a cigarette case with the initials W.S. engraved on the lid, and now he also had a medallion that said HODIE MIHI, CRAS TIBI.
Henry was starting to feel sentimental and lethargic, and he longed to get away from this bar, which could hardly be called a bar at all. At first he longed to be back with Tove, and he ordered another whisky, but then he started longing to be back home with Maud. This was not easy.
Henry, the secret agent, meaning Bill Yard, didn’t want to talk to anyone, because if you were an agent, it was important to keep your mouth shut and not spill the beans. Anyone at all, some seductively beautiful woman or some insignificant busybody, might be a counter-spy. His great strength here in life was being able to judge people more or less accurately; that was why he had managed rather well during his exile. Henry claimed that he was psychic and could tell exactly which people were evil and which ones were good. But that sort of thing didn’t apply in the secret-agent business; there a person had to be vigilant, suspicious and sceptical. This didn’t sit very well with Henry. It didn’t suit his temperament at all.
________
He was in a smoky, damp, greasy bar on Fasanenstrasse. Henry had been playing billiards with a guy from Kreuzberg. The German was remarkably skilful in spite of the fact that he had only one arm and had been forced to adopt a very peculiar style of playing. He was too young to have been wounded in the war, and Henry had already heard his story several times. They had been drinking hard.
He was called Franz after Döblin’s hero because he had lost his right arm. Franz enjoyed games, and in the past he’d once been part of a successful bowling team. In the autumn of 1957 the team had gone on tour to compete against a couple of clubs in Amsterdam. One evening Franz and his team-mates were practising in a bowling alley when all of a sudden a confused desperado turned up, pursued by the police. The man was a paranoid type, and he shot down the whole bowling team, one after the other. When it was Franz’s turn, he was lucky enough to have the bullet lodge in his arm. Then the revolver clicked. Franz seized the opportunity and killed the man with an ornamental bowling pin.
‘I still have the bowling pin, Bill,’ he said. ‘You can come over and see it.’
‘No, thanks,’ said Henry. ‘I have no desire to see your fucking bowling pin.’
In any case, Franz had beaten Henry by a good margin in that smoky, damp, greasy bar on Fasanenstrasse, and the price was a round of beer and schnapps. Henry had paid for a second round as well as the first. Then Franz said that he wanted more, and they started quarrelling. This one-armed devil isn’t so tough, thought Henry. Besides, Franz spoke very poor English, so they were having a hard time swearing at each other.
It started raining again, and this was no meagre autumn shower. It came pouring down on Fasanenstrasse, and rubbish sailed along the gutters in a fierce torrent, disappearing into the sewers.
Suddenly and without warming, Henry got very angry and started arguing with Franz. They nearly came to blows, and Henry didn’t notice that a very beautiful woman of about twenty-five had come into the bar, apparently to seek shelter from the rain. At least I assume that’s how it must have been.
‘Dammit, you’re nothing but a fucking cheat!’ shouted Henry in bad German, and that proved to be too much for Franz.
Franz dumped a whole glass of beer on Henry’s head and then took off, well aware of his guilt – he actually was to blame for all the commotion.
Some of the beer splashed onto the young woman who had just come into the bar. Henry was both drunk and upset, and he hated Berlin more than ever. Yet in spite of this, he was able to pull himself together enough to apologise.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the woman.
‘You speak English?!’
‘I am English,’ the woman said.
That changed things considerably, and that was how Henry became acquainted with Verena, because that was her name, Verena Musgrave. Henry thought it was all a coincidence.
Henry climbed back onto the bar stool and offered her a Roth-Händle cigarette. The match exploded with a delayed little pop as he struck it.
‘There are plenty of idiots in this city,’ said Henry. ‘A bowling pin …’
‘A bowling pin?’ said Verena Musgrave.
Henry babbled on about the desperado in Amsterdam, the bowling pin and Franz with the arm that had been shot off.
‘I don’t think I really understand,’ said Verena.
‘It’s not important,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t understand any of it myself. He was probably just a fucking liar.’
‘It’s cold today,’ said Verena.
‘Have a schnapps. That usually helps. You can borrow my coat if you like.’
‘No, thanks,’ said Verena. ‘I think I’d rather have a schnapps.’
The rain started coming down hard, and a sullen Alsatian slipped inside the bar to rest and dry off in a corner. He was a stray, like so many other creatures in that city.
‘What sort of business brings you to town?’ asked Henry, because he had now opened his bloodshot eyes and taken a proper look at this young woman.
‘I’m doing research,’ said Verena. ‘At the Geheimes Staatsarkiv in Dahlem.’
‘And what does someone like yourself do there?’
‘I search for people,’ she said. ‘People who have disappeared but can’t really be called dead.’
‘I see,’ said Henry. ‘That doesn’t sound especially festive.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’
‘It’s research,’ said Verena curtly, coughing from the s
trong cigarette.
Henry the secret agent was trying to pull himself together, to concentrate and think for a moment. And naturally he happened to think of Verner Hansson, the chess genius. ‘I have a neighbour back home in Sweden, in Stockholm. He’s a bit nuts, but he just loves people who have disappeared. He was a chess genius as a kid, and he started a club for young inventors …’
Verena laughed in an odd way.
‘Go ahead and laugh!’ said Henry. ‘But it’s true. He got a little strange and started developing an interest in mysterious cases in which people vanished without a trace – young boys who went out to get wood on a cold evening in January. It was only twenty-five steps to the woodshed, but on that particular night …’
‘They disappear?’ said Verena, coughing again.
‘For good,’ said Henry, lighting another Roth-Händle. ‘My pal Verner has an entire archive of missing persons. The police envy him. You’d love him.’
They each ordered another beer, and Henry, alias Bill Yard, babbled on, as well-mannered as he could be when he was in top form, and he didn’t notice how loose-lipped he was becoming. Verena told him – as he managed, with great difficulty, to remember later – that she lived in a boarding house run by an old woman, and the whole building consisted of old flats whose owners had disappeared, in most cases during the war, although they were never declared dead. The boarding house was supposedly located on Bleibtreustrasse, not far from Savignyplatz.
The secret agent liked Verena. She seemed so earnest, in a vague sort of way. He was drunk but still aware enough to want to make a respectable impression. He wanted to turn on the charm here at the bar. So he excused himself and went out to the men’s room to wash off the lager that had stuck to his hair. His face was flushed but he was freezing.
When he came back to the bar, Verena was gone. She had paid for his last beer and left. Henry collapsed like an empty sack; he was crestfallen. He left the smoky, greasy bar on Fasanenstrasse, thinking that all of a sudden a lot of people seemed to be disappearing from his life.
Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8) Page 25